Cynthia had risen, and all of the laugher was gone from her eyes.  What had happened to make her grow suddenly grave, Isaac Worthington never knew.

“I have to get my father’s supper,” she said.

He, too, rose, puzzled and disconcerted at this change in her.

“And may I not come to Coniston?” he asked.

“My father and I should be glad to see you, Mr. Worthington,” she answered.

He untied her horse and essayed one more topic.

“You are taking a very big book,” he said.  “May I look at the title?”

She showed it to him in silence.  It was the “Life of Napoleon Bonaparte.”

CHAPTER V

Isaac Worthington came to Coniston not once, but many times, before the snow fell; and afterward, too, in Silas Wheelock’s yellow sleigh through the great drifts under the pines, the chestnut Morgan trotting to one side in the tracks.  On one of these excursions he fell in with that singular character of a bumpkin who had interested him on his first visit, in coonskin cap and overcoat and mittens.  Jethro Bass was plodding in the same direction, and Isaac Worthington, out of the goodness of his heart, invited him into the sleigh.  He was scarcely prepared for the bumpkin’s curt refusal, but put it down to native boorishness, and thought no more about it then.

What troubled Mr. Worthington infinitely more was the progress of his suit; for it had become a snit, though progress is a wrong word to use in connection with it.  So far had he got,—­not a great distance,—­and then came to what he at length discovered was a wall, and apparently impenetrable.  He was not even allowed to look over it.  Cynthia was kind, engaging; even mirthful, at times, save when he approached it; and he became convinced that a certain sorrow lay in the forbidden ground.  The nearest he had come to it was when he mentioned again, by accident, that life of Napoleon.

That Cynthia would accept him, nobody doubted for an instant.  It would be madness not to.  He was orthodox, so Deacon Ira had discovered, of good habits, and there was the princely four hundred a year—­almost a minister’s salary!  Little people guessed that there was no love-making—­only endless discussions of books beside the great centre chimney, and discussions of Isaac Worthington’s career.

It is a fact—­for future consideration—­that Isaac Worthington proposed to Cynthia Ware, although neither Speedy Bates nor Deacon Ira Perkins heard him do so.  It had been very carefully prepared, that speech, and was a model of proposals for the rising young men of all time.  Mr. Worthington preferred to offer himself for what he was going to be—­not for what he was.  He tendered to Cynthia a note for a large amount, payable in some twenty years, with interest.  The astonishing thing to record is that in twenty years he could have more than paid the note, although he could not have foreseen